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Global Sustainability
cambridge.org/sus
Research Article
Cite this article: Keys PW et al. (2024). The dry
sky: future scenarios for humanity’s
modification of the atmospheric water cycle.
Global Sustainability 7,e11,1–13. https://
doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9
Received: 15 April 2022
Revised: 1 November 2023
Accepted: 27 November 2023
Keywords:
Earth systems (land; water and atmospheric);
economics; ecosystem services; policies;
politics and governance; water security
Corresponding author:
Patrick W. Keys;
Email: patrick.keys@colostate.edu
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by
Cambridge University Press. This is an Open
Access article, distributed under the terms of
the Creative Commons Attribution licence
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution
and reproduction, provided the original article
is properly cited.
The dry sky: future scenarios for humanity’s
modification of the atmospheric water cycle
Patrick W. Keys1, Lan Wang-Erlandsson2, Michele-Lee Moore2,
Agnes Pranindita2, Fabian Stenzel3, Olli Varis4, Rekha Warrier5,
R. Bin Wong6, Paolo D’Odorico7and Carl Folke2,8
1
Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA;
2
Stockholm Resilience
Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden;
3
Earth System Analysis, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research, Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany;
4
Built Environment, Aalto University, Aalto, Finland;
5
Department of
Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA;
6
Department of History,
University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA;
7
Department of Environmental Science, Policy, &
Management, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA and
8
Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics,
Stockholm, Sweden
Abstract
Non-Technical Summary. Human societies are changing where and how water flows through
the atmosphere. However, these changes in the atmospheric water cycle are not being mana-
ged, nor is there any real sense of where these changes might be headed in the future. Thus, we
develop a new economic theory of atmospheric water management, and explore this theory
using creative story-based scenarios. These scenarios reveal surprising possibilities for the
future of atmospheric water management, ranging from a stock market for transpiration to
on-demand weather. We discuss these story-based futures in the context of research and pol-
icy priorities in the present day.
Technical Summary. Humanity is modifying the atmospheric water cycle, via land use, cli-
mate change, air pollution, and weather modification. Historically, atmospheric water was
implicitly considered a ‘public good’since it was neither actively consumed nor controlled.
However, given anthropogenic changes, atmospheric water can become a 'common-pool’
good (consumable) or a 'club’good (controllable). Moreover, advancements in weather modi-
fication presage water becoming a 'private’good, meaning both consumable and controllable.
Given the implications, we designed a theoretical framing of atmospheric water as an eco-
nomic good and used a combination of methods in order to explore possible future scenarios
based on human modifications of the atmospheric water cycle. First, a systematic literature
search of scholarly abstracts was used in a computational text analysis. Second, the output
of the text analysis was matched to different parts of an existing economic goods framework.
Then, a group of global water experts were trained and developed story-based scenarios. The
resultant scenarios serve as creative investigations of the future of human modification of the
atmospheric water cycle. We discuss how the scenarios can enhance anticipatory capacity in
the context of both future research frontiers and potential policy pathways including trans-
boundary governance, finance, and resource management.
Social Media Summary. Story-based scenarios reveal novel future pathways for the manage-
ment of the atmospheric water cycle.
1. Introduction
Human societies are changing the atmospheric water cycle –evaporation, moisture transport,
precipitation –via land-use change, climate change, air pollution, and more recently also via
weather modification. Land-use changes directly affect evaporation from land and include
everything from replacing tropical forests with rangelands, to irrigating deserts, and converting
grasslands to monocultures (Gasparri et al., 2016; Lambin et al., 2001; Lambin & Meyfroidt,
2011). Climate change influences precipitation patterns profoundly, and increasing air pollu-
tion, aerosols in particular, affects atmospheric physics including cloud formation and precipi-
tation (Allan et al., 2020; Ramanathan et al., 2001; Rosenfeld et al., 2008). These modifications
can have significant consequences for the timing, magnitude, and duration of evaporation
delivery to the atmosphere, and the fate of precipitation elsewhere (Bagley et al., 2012;Keys
et al., 2016; Mahmood et al., 2014; Staal et al., 2018; Swann et al., 2015; Tuinenburg et al.,
2014; Wang-Erlandsson et al., 2018,2022; Wei et al., 2012; Zemp et al., 2017). Given the
actual, and potential, changes globally, we conceptualize these flows of atmospheric water –
including the delivery of evaporation, the flow of water vapor, and eventual precipitation –
as economic goods.
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Historically, flows of atmospheric water could implicitly be
considered ‘public goods’since evaporation flows and atmos-
pheric water vapor were generally neither consumed (rival) nor
controlled (exclusive) (Farley & Costanza, 2010). However,
given that people can change this relationship via land-use
change, atmospheric water may transition into a ‘common-pool’
good (rival and non-excludable; Rockström et al., 2023), and pos-
sibly to a controlled ‘club’good (non-rival and excludable). Now,
with the advent of scientifically verifiable cloud seeding, specific-
ally via recent work on wintertime orographic cloud seeding
(French et al., 2018; Tessendorf et al., 2015,2019), deliberate
atmospheric water manipulation may accelerate in its deploy-
ment, in the near future. Along with scientific advancements in
the understanding of fog harvesting (Qadir et al., 2018;Tu
et al., 2018), it is now conceivable for atmospheric moisture to
enter the domain of ‘private good’(i.e. excludable and rival).
Yet, there has been no documented effort to seriously consider
the implications or future pathways of anthropogenic modifica-
tion of the atmospheric water cycle, despite the far reaching impli-
cations for society (Keys et al., 2017;teWieriketal.,2020).
Therefore, we explore the possible implications that could arise if
atmospheric water transitions away from a public good, to become
a common-pool, club, or private good. In doing so, we aim to iden-
tify new pathways forward that could better anticipate and support
research and policy needs.
Scenarios are a commonly used tool for exploring future tra-
jectories of science, policy, and culture (Carpenter et al., 2006),
yet scenarios can vary widely in terms of approach, style, and
depth of detail (Kishita et al., 2016). Scenario narratives are com-
monly used to provide both qualitative interpretations of observed
or model-based findings, and to facilitate stakeholder engagement
(Carpenter et al., 2006;O’Neill et al., 2017; Raskin, 2005).
Importantly though, scenario narratives are often only descrip-
tions –not stories –of possible future worlds. While such descrip-
tions can be creative, they often fail to foster student curiosity,
engage the public, or interest policymakers (Milkoreit, 2017).
Story-based scenarios have emerged as successful vehicles for
impactful scenarios (Calvert, 2019; Johnson & Winkelman,
2017; Merrie et al., 2018; Nature, 2018) given the ways that stories
and storytelling can allow for sense- and meaning-making, reveal
assumptions or hidden biases, and create alternate worlds (Bentz
et al., 2022; Riedy, 2020). Story-based scenarios represent a deeper
exploration of future worlds (Carbonell et al., 2017), and allow
participants to explore how their daily lives, values, and habits
can be mapped onto different projections of the future.
Despite ongoing recognition of the various ways in which
anthropogenic changes actively modify the atmospheric water
cycle (Gordon et al., 2005; Keys et al., 2016; Kleidon, 2006;
Schumacher et al., 2022; Wang-Erlandsson et al., 2018), there
remain gaps in mainstream water policy, nationally and inter-
nationally, for managing changes to the atmospheric water cycle
via land-use change (Keys & Wang-Erlandsson, 2018; te Wierik
et al., 2020). The main international policies that do exist guide
the use of precipitation enhancement (e.g. to avoid hostile
actions) and have existed for decades. The Convention on the
Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of
Environmental Modification Techniques, popularly known as
ENMOD, was intended to ban weather modification for warfare
(Bonnheim, 2010; Wunsch, 1980). However, weather modifica-
tion, specifically precipitation enhancement that is not for hostile
use, is typically managed on a national basis. For example, in the
United States any activities seeking to modify weather must
submit a report of their activities to the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (Charak &
DiGiulian, 1974; Simon, 2021) and China passed its first national
law on weather modification in 2002 (Chien et al., 2017).
Nevertheless, there is no global policy for guiding human actions
specifically regarding changes in atmospheric moisture and the
effects on the overall global hydrological cycle. Chen (2016)
explored the opportunity for updated property rights framings
to be incorporated for atmospheric moisture in the United
States, and that legal interpretations of atmospheric moisture
have led to communal, that is, governmental, rights to manage-
ment rather than individual or private rights. However, this dis-
cussion does not include anthropogenic modification of
evaporation, and the associated delivery of moisture to the atmos-
phere. Thus, there is a gap in the scientific understanding of the
potentially diverse sources of weather modification, and the asso-
ciated policy discourse. This gap between scientific understanding
and policy is, in part, due to the lack of framing terrestrial mois-
ture recycling and atmospheric water manipulation in terms that
are salient to policy (Keys et al., 2017). Our study responds to this
gap by framing this topic in policy terms that are directly related
to ownership and control.
2. Conceptual development
2.1 Rivalry and excludability for atmospheric water
In economics, the concept of ‘goods’(e.g. timber, theater tickets,
parking spaces) can be categorized into four quadrants based on
how use and control of goods affects their status. First, if the use
of a good reduces its available supply for others, it is called rival,
while if use does not reduce availability it is considered non-rival
(Kaul et al., 1999). Second, if a good can be intentionally or unin-
tentionally controlled such that others can be prevented from
access, it can be considered excludable, while if such control is
not possible it is considered non-excludable (Kaul et al., 1999).
This classification produces a four quadrant space, including:
‘public’goods (non-rival, non-excludable), ‘common-pool’
goods (rival, non-excludable), ‘club’goods (non-rival, exclud-
able), and ‘private’goods (rival, excludable) (Figure 1). Many
natural resources are considered ‘public’goods, especially spatially
extensive phenomena such as clouds, air, timber, or even ice caps.
This classification is appropriate, human intervention being
absent. However, there are now few if any actual ‘public’goods
remaining, given the pervasive and widespread anthropogenic
impacts on temperature, ocean heat budgets, and other planetary
changes (Steffen et al., 2015) that drive and perpetuate unequal
access to ecosystem services within societies and across genera-
tions (Hamann et al., 2018; Thiery et al., 2021).
We classify atmospheric water into the four quadrants, based
on how humans modify rivalry and excludability (Figure 1). For
atmospheric water to be categorized as a ‘public’good, anthropo-
genic activities that could modify atmospheric water would need
to steward atmospheric water availability elsewhere in an undir-
ected way. If anthropogenic activities change the quantity of mois-
ture that is available elsewhere, then atmospheric water moves
toward becoming a ‘common-pool’resource. If anthropogenic
activities exert control over the distribution of moisture but do
not change the availability of moisture, then atmospheric water
moves toward a ‘club’good. Finally, if anthropogenic activities
modify both the quantity and exert control over atmospheric
water, then it moves toward a ‘private’good.
2 Patrick W. Keys et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
The core objective of this study is to introduce the conceptual
exploration of atmospheric water as an economic good, with
story-based scenarios of how such human modifications of the
atmospheric water cycle may unfold in the future. To do this
we blended multiple methods, incorporating computational text
analysis, expert participation, and creative science fiction storytell-
ing. Our paper is organized as follows. First, we will explain our
methods, which blend a structured literature search, with compu-
tational text analysis, with expert training and collaboration, and
storytelling. We then interpret these story-based scenarios in the
context of improving our understanding of the future of human
modification of the atmospheric water cycle. Further, we discuss
both policy and research frontiers that need to be explored
given the findings of this scenario exercise.
3. Methods
There were five key steps in this research, which we highlight here
and explain in detail below. First, a structured literature search
was performed, and we collected a large set, or corpus, of
scholarly abstracts on the topic of human modification of
the atmospheric water cycle. Second, we employed a machine
learning-based computational text analysis (called latent
Dirichlet allocation, LDA), which is a method for revealing the
latent topics and keywords that exist across a corpus of docu-
ments. Third, the topics and keywords were mapped to the eco-
nomic goods framework, based on a subjective interpretation of
each topic’s keywords. Fourth, we used the results of the LDA
to inform a structured futuring exercise among a group of global
water experts. This collaborative process involved guiding the
experts through a set of creative exercises to develop imaginative
visions of future worlds, where humans are (or are not) modifying
the atmospheric water cycle. Fifth, a subset of the expert colla-
borators took these imaginative worlds, and were guided through
a creative story-telling process. The results of this study are ten
story-based scenarios. We provide a detailed explanation of
each step below.
3.1 Structured literature search
The first task was to create a structured literature query to collect
scholarly abstracts related to human modification of the atmos-
pheric water cycle (Table 1). After a preliminary exploration of
various search terms, phrases, and exclusions, we used the search
query below, which was intended to maximize the literature col-
lected, while avoiding false returns. We exclusively used the
Web of Science search function, which permits a sophisticated
search query and automated download process for collecting
Figure 1. Conceptual overview of atmospheric water as an eco-
nomic good. The horizontal axis indicates excludability of a
resource. The vertical axis indicates whether the resource is
rivalrous. Within each, there is a brief detail of the key require-
ment for atmospheric water to exist in that domain.
Table 1. Words and phrases that comprised the structured literature query in
Web of Science
Must include a word (or phrase,
enclosed by quotes) from the
following
Must include a word
from the following
land atmosphere precipitation
OR
‘moisture recycling’
OR
‘precipitation recycling’
OR
‘cloud seeding’
OR
‘precipitation enhance*’
OR
‘glaciogenic seed*’
OR
‘weather modification’
OR
‘climate manage*’
OR
‘atmospheric water harvest*’
AND human*
OR
anthropo*
OR
soci*
OR
people
OR
agricult*
Global Sustainability 3
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scholarly abstracts. Throughout the query, we used asterisks (*),
which allowed a word to be completed by numerous suffixes,
for example, ‘human*’indicates that it would include ‘human’,
‘humanity’,‘humans’,or‘humanities’. Similarly, metadata about
the abstracts was downloaded in a tabular format permitting
easy cross referencing. The query is represented in Table 1, indi-
cating that these words and phrases would need to be present in
any of the searchable fields within Web of Science, including the
article title, keywords, abstract, or other searchable text.
Using the table of metadata, we performed a manual quality
control to ensure that the abstracts included the necessary rele-
vant information, specifically the full text of the abstract, and
were, for example, not erroneously blank. Additionally, the quality
control checks involved identifying whether a given document
was associated with an abstract, searching for duplicate abstracts,
and manually searching for abstracts that were not automatically
retrieved with the Web of Science search. These abstracts (i.e.
documents) were then used in our computational text analysis
forming the corpus of analyzed literature.
The abstracts collected in the structured literature search
above were prepared for the computational text analysis by
batch converting them into plain text format, so that they
would be machine readable. Similarly, additional information,
such as author or other watermarks, were removed from the
text so that only the abstract content was included in each
document.
3.2 Latent Dirichlet allocation
The computational text analysis was performed using Python-
based software including the natural language toolkit, the
GENSIM package, and other common computational packages.
ThespecificPythonsoftwareversionsusedfortheanalysis
were Python v3.7.7, Natural Language Toolkit (i.e. NLTK),
v3.4.4, and Gensim Python package v3.8.0. Following the
methods of Keys and Meyer (2022), the LDA was performed
sequentially including: pre-processing the documents (includ-
ing tokenization, stopword removal, and lemmatization), sensi-
tivity testing to identify the most suitable number of topics for
the LDA, and visualization of the final text analysis. First, dur-
ing tokenization each word across all documents in the corpus
was converted into an individual unit (i.e. token) of analysis
(e.g. ‘all of these words’becomes four tokens ‘all’,‘of’,‘these’,
‘words’). Second, stopwords, which are words that appear in
texts but convey little to no information (e.g. ‘I’,‘we’,‘and’,
‘as’,‘the’, etc.), were removed. Third, words were lemmatized,
which means similar words were collapsed into a common
form (e.g. ‘connections’becomes ‘connection’). This process
allowed a greater number of unique tokens to be represented
in the analysis.
LDA was a process of iteratively identifying the underlying
topic structure across the entire corpus of documents. First, a
target number of topics was assigned for the analysis (e.g. 15
topics). Then, the LDA was performed aiming to find the
most representative set of 15 topics (with the corresponding
keywords). Thus, by varying the number of topics, a different
set of topics and keywords could have been revealed. Several
methods exist to find the most statistically robust set of topics,
such as ‘coherence’.Theideaof‘coherence’refers to a statis-
tical representation of how each topic makes interpretable
sense for a machine, such that the keywords included within
each topic have some common meaning or connection. The
coherence metric c_v (Röder et al., 2015) was used in a sensi-
tivity analysis to identify the most statistically robust number
of topics, by iteratively varying the number of topics in the
LDA from 5 to 35. Then, we identified the top three topics
with the highest coherence scores, to determine whether the
resultant topics and keywords were interpretable. To do this,
the keywords corresponding to each topic for each LDA ana-
lysis were manually examined for interpretable coherence by
the lead author. This primarily involved identifying whether
keywords within a cluster exhibited some common characteris-
tics, and that the clusters themselves were distinct from one
another.
Finally, if the keywords for a topic represented <1% of total
terms across the entire corpus, then that topic was removed
from the analysis. Topics with low term representation were not
coherent enough for the story-based scenario process (Keys &
Meyer, 2022).
3.3 Map themes onto economic goods framework
The topics produced from the text analysis were interpreted based
on the semantic content of the keywords. This interpretation was
then mapped onto the economic goods quadrants, as a way to
connect the text analysis explicitly to the economic goods classi-
fication. This process was subjective and led by the lead author of
this study. Multiple interpretations of this mapping are possible,
and we discuss the implications of this in Section 5.4.
3.4 Expert participatory science fiction prototyping
The next step was to work with a set of global water experts to col-
laboratively interpret the thematic output of the computational
text analysis and systematically develop science fiction prototypes.
Water experts were recruited from a group of scientists, scholars,
and practitioners with broad expertise on global water topics who
attended a virtual water resilience symposium hosted by the
Stockholm Resilience Centre. A series of two, virtual workshops
(February 22, 2022 and March 3, 2022) were convened to train
the water experts in story-based scenario development, specifically
a workshop on worldbuilding using futures methods (e.g. science
fiction prototyping), and a workshop on storytelling. The lead
author of this article prepared the materials and conducted the
workshops for the participants.
3.5 Workshop no. 1: worldbuilding
Worldbuilding is defined as ‘the creation of imaginary worlds
with coherent geographic, social, cultural, and other features’
(von Stackelberg & McDowell, 2015). The expert participants
were led in individual, guided exercises that began with each par-
ticipant reviewing a specific topic and its associated keywords.
Participants were assigned an economic good quadrant, which
provided some constraints to the worldbuilding while also ensur-
ing each of the quadrants was examined by at least some partici-
pants. Participants were then prompted to visualize a future
beyond 2050 that was inspired by the keywords and topic. After
taking notes on these visualizations each participant was led in
a structured Futures Wheels exercise (Pereira et al., 2018).
Futures Wheels permit an exploration of direct interactions and
consequences, flowing from a focal event or item in the future
(Hamann et al., 2020).
4 Patrick W. Keys et al.
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After the individual exercises, groups were formed for each
economic good quadrant, with two participants each representing
public good and private good and three participants each repre-
senting club good and common pool. Each group was then guided
through three exercises: (1) three horizons framework; (2) probe
reality; and (3) make-it-weird. The three horizons framework is
a structured exercise to systematically describe historical transi-
tions from the present status quo, through a transition period
toward a futuristic transformed third horizon (Sharpe et al.,
2016). The first, second, and third horizons are often character-
ized as paradigms that shift in dominance over time. The three
horizons exercise involves putting the visualized futures (e.g.
from the Futures Wheels exercise) at the end of the third horizon
and describing the first and second horizons. After the three hor-
izons exercise, participants were encouraged to ‘Probe reality’and
discuss what broader cultural forces might shape the broader
future world. To do this, we employed the heuristic of the ‘cultural
iceberg’(Hall, 1989), which is used to reflect on deeper, less vis-
ible aspects of culture. Lastly, groups were encouraged to make it
weird by pushing their ideas to ridiculous domains (Dator, 1993).
This included probing social norms, technological surprises, and
more.
3.6 Workshop no. 2: storytelling
This second virtual workshop focused on guiding participants
through the storytelling process, namely designing a character
for a story and then systematically drafting a plot. For the charac-
ter design section, participants were encouraged to imagine a
character that would inhabit their world from the first workshop.
Then, progressive activities focused on defining internal and
external characteristics, motivations of what make the character
act, obstacles that are relevant to their character, and thinking
about the wants of a character versus what they might need for
a satisfying story arc. In the second part of the workshop, partici-
pants designed a plot set in their world that their characters would
navigate (Keys & Meyer, 2022). The exercises here were built
around identifying ‘Story beats’, specifically:
•Act I
◦Once upon a time…
◦Every day…
◦Until one day…
•Act II
◦Because of this…
◦Because of that…
•Act III
◦Until finally…
◦Ever since then…
The story beats were nominally split into three acts, as a way to
distribute action across a given story. This structure provided a
basic scaffold on which a story could be built that would allow
a character to navigate the created world, and work through
obstacles to ultimately reveal something about the particular eco-
nomic goods quadrant. Following the two workshops, partici-
pants were invited to contribute scenarios based on their
workshop output. These scenarios were collaboratively edited by
different members of the author team, with all stories edited by
the lead author. We note that there was an explicit emphasis on
creativity and strangeness in the development of the story-based
scenarios. An implication of this is limited control of bias or
subjectivity. In the particular context of creative and generative
scenario development, this is viewed as both necessary and an
advantage for exploring novel possibilities.
4. Results
4.1 Literature query
The structured web query returned 2573 abstracts. Following
quality control checks, 2274 articles remained.
4.2 Latent Dirichlet allocation
Based on the coherence metric c_v, we identified LDA models
with topics numbering 11, 15, and 17 as good candidates for
our analysis (Supplementary Figure 1). Ultimately, while 11 topics
yielded the highest coherence value, we selected 17 topics as the
most suitable LDA model given it had the highest (subjective)
interpretability for its words and topics. We also adjusted the
pyLDAvis ‘relevance metric’slider to 0.6, which corresponds to
the recommended value for maximum novelty and coherence in
a given topic analysis (Sievert & Shirley, 2014).
The overall topic visualization is shown in Figure 2, and shows
the distribution of the 17 topics, the terms (i.e. keywords) corre-
sponding to the overall corpus, and the representativeness of these
terms across the corpus. We ended up excluding topics 13–17
because they each represented less than 1% of terms in the corpus,
and had quite low interpretability. While this removal could have
led to missing some weakly represented ideas in the dataset, we
considered this appropriate given that the remaining topics cov-
ered a substantial range of disciplines and ideas. A full set of
visualizations for topics 1–12 are available in the Supplementary
pyLDAvis figures.
A filtering of topics 1–12 was performed by the lead author, to
ensure the keywords formed interpretable clusters. Several topics
were obviously focused on issues that were only tangentially con-
nected to the topics we aimed to better understand in the scenario
and storytelling work. Ultimately, of the 12 topics, topic 2 was
removed (focused on carbon uptake, and nutrient loss, but not
on atmospheric water) and topic 10 was removed (focused on
organic sediment and river discharge, but not atmospheric
water). Thus, we were left with ten total topics to be explored in
the workshops and structured futuring (Table 2; the full table of
all topics and keywords is available in the Supplementary
material).
4.3 Map themes onto economic goods framework
Next, we took the remaining topics and mapped them directly
onto the economic goods framing (Figure 3). This step allowed
for a direct connection of certain topics and keywords to be expli-
citly explored in the context of particular economic goods fram-
ings. For each topic, the keywords were considered how and
where they might exist in the spectrum of excludability and
rivalry. For example, topic 11 included keywords that refer to
cloud microphysics, aircraft, cloud condensation nuclei (CCN),
mountains, and ice. All of these would be relevant for glaciogenic
cloud seeding, that is, the deliberate enhancement of wintertime
precipitation. Thus, this topic and keywords were assigned to
the ‘private good’quadrant. We note here that our classification
is but one of many potential classifications. An opportunity exists
to classify the topics into different quadrants, which would
Global Sustainability 5
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
eventually lead to different types of story-based scenarios, which
we explore in Section 5(Table 3).
4.4 Expert workshops overview
The first workshop included ten participants, with specific activ-
ities for each workshop participant to complete individually, and
then as a group. The disciplinary backgrounds included hydrome-
teorology, land-use change, urban water infrastructure, compara-
tive governance, water resources management, and ecology. Both
the first and second workshops were conducted virtually, which
enabled broad geographic collaboration. The second workshop
included five participants, and was explicitly focused on story-
based development informed by the results from the first
workshop.
During the first workshop, the participants first worked indi-
vidually using exercises including a guided visualization and a
Futures Wheels exercise (an example of a Futures Wheels diagram
for the ‘private good’category is shown in Supplementary
Figure S2). Second, participants were then grouped together
based on each of the four economic goods quadrants, and collab-
oratively participated in exercises using the three horizons frame-
work (Supplementary Figure S3), the cultural iceberg
(Supplementary Figure S4), and the ‘make-it-weird’framework
(Supplementary Figure S5). During the second workshop, five
of the original ten participants were led through a set of guided
exercises, and produced outlines of characters and plots for
their scenario worlds that they designed in the first workshop.
4.5 Collaborative scenario writing
Ten story-based scenarios were generated that are representative
of the original ten topics identified in the computational text ana-
lysis. The full set of stories is available in the Supplementary
material. The lead author provided editing and guidance for all
of the scenarios. The final scenarios are short, written stories ran-
ging in length from approximately 1000 to 2000 words and
include a range of forms including oratory, journal entries,
internal reflections, third-person narrative, conversations and dia-
logues, and a podcast transcript. Similarly, the scenarios are set on
all populated continents, in Myanmar, India, Australia, United
States, Brazil, Nigeria, Germany, and China.
4.6 Scenarios illustrate strange possibilities
Based on the final story output, we analyze the patterns and the
possibilities that illustrate important aspects of the future of
human modification of the atmospheric water. First, geophysical
realities, such as proximity to coastlines, may confer some resist-
ance of atmospheric moisture becoming anything other than a
public good, given both the constant replenishment (i.e. non-
rival) and limited potential for control (i.e. non-excludable) of
oceanic sources of moisture. Second, technology change could
lead to surprising social and legal problems related to transbound-
ary decision making and liability related to manipulation of wea-
ther. Third, climate changes will modulate every aspect of human
society, and thus lead to an ever-broadening incentive to control
and manage precipitation. Fourth, social norms that are radically
Figure 2. Visualization of topic distribution (left), and full list of keywords for the overall topic analysis (right). This visualization was created using the pyLDAvis
Python package. Note that visualizations for each individual topic are included in the Supplementary material.
6 Patrick W. Keys et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Table 2. LDA topic number and keywords used in the scenario development
LDA topic
number LDA topic keywords
Topic
identifier
1 precipitation, model, region, rainfall, study, observation, result, variability, observe, time, simulation, simulate,
seasonal, scale, atmospheric, pattern, compare, air, high, associate, low, large, spatial, analysis, season, show,
summer, difference, occur, event
A
2 climate, change, global, future, model, impact, management, scenario, land, project, regional, include, uncertainty,
human, earth, country, current, strategy, landscape, projection, natural, terrestrial, expect, date, predict, tool,
challenge, problem, population, assess
B
3 drought, temperature, increase, forest, area, trend, extreme, record, crop, annual, growth, yield, index, high, condition,
degree, average, factor, agricultural, production, urban, year, significant, decrease, china, plant, stress, map, climatic
C
5 aerosol, warm, increase, response, effect, warming, decrease, induce, cool, ocean, reduction, anthropogenic, direct,
temperature, surface, instrument, forcing, reduce, radiative, bc, force, degree, ozone, enhance, lead, east asia, heating,
modus, ghg, maize
D
6 datum, method, base, approach, information, satellite, estimate, product, quality, performance, application,
technique, provide, improve, pressure, measurement, develop, delta, propose, parameter, group, signal, objective,
indicator, space, test, monitoring, new, obtain, achieve
E
7 vegetation, surface, soil moisture, land, cover, soil, energy, heat, exchange, water vapor, canopy, stage, flux, green,
evaporation, australia, layer, leaf, atmosphere, content, moisture, cropland, subsurface, age, grass, condensation,
dynamic, desert, heterogeneous, slight
F
8 research, design, technology, effort, scientific, community, policy, weather, science, program, system, development,
paper, economic, knowledge, control, plan, use, gap, cost, review, address, benefit, solution, conclusion, weather
modification, risk, issue, biotic, resource
G
9 water, irrigation, supply, series, demand, relevant, sector, requirement, availability, hydrologic, theory, deforestation,
flow, efficiency, standard, platform, wetland, chamber, stream, amazon basin, operate, cycle, hold, amazon, capacity,
energy, learn, connect, sky, evaporation
H
11 cloud, rain, ice, radar, snow, droplet, melt, aircraft, liquid, microphysical, snowpack, cell, altitude, artificial, suppress,
storm, channel, mountain, boundary, reflectivity, hour, sequence, stratiform, pass, orographic, westward, scientist,
radar reflectivity, formation, kilometer
I
12 match, island, april, middle, validate, drop, band, damage, image, bring, wrf, protection, wind, ccn, easterly, mm, bay,
composite, air mass, size distribution, dry land, daytime, suppression, mature, salinity, ion, adequate, peninsula, night
time, bulk
J
An alphabetic ‘Topic identifier’is provided to link Tables 2 and 3.
Figure 3. Classification of topics within the economic goods
quadrant space, based on interpretation of keywords within
each topic (topic identifier matches Tables 2 and 3).
Global Sustainability 7
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
different from the present day may emerge from transformations
caused by increasingly frequent Anthropocene crises. We sum-
marized key characteristics of these scenarios in Table 4.
The scenarios allowed us to explore relationships among water-
related sectors, as well as draw connections among disciplines and
topics that are unconnected to water science. Table 5 includes
excerpts from four of the ten scenarios that were developed in
this study. The public good quadrant is represented by an excerpt
from ‘The Palash’. The excerpt references how historical weather
modification led to Earth system consequences (e.g. transformation
of South Asian monsoon dynamics) and was later globally banned
as a result. The story explicitly mentions human rights conse-
quences that could arise resulting from human modification of
the atmospheric water cycle. This ‘assault’led to atmospheric
water being recognized and protected as a public good.
The common-pool quadrant includes an excerpt from the
scenario ‘T-Trading’. The excerpt mentions how a comprehensive
conservation and preservation effort for the Amazon led to a dif-
ferent perspective on how to profit from the intact forest cover.
This story explores unexpected implications of successful conser-
vation efforts, such as the financialization of the Amazonian
atmospheric water cycle. While financialization is already dis-
cussed in the contexts of deforestation and commodities in the
Amazon (Galaz et al., 2018), financialization of the atmospheric
water cycle is a new topic.
The club good quadrant is represented by ‘Too much rain in
paradise’, and the excerpt highlights the role of weather modifica-
tion in community-scale efforts to avoid flooding or unwanted
rain. This story could be viewed as a technologically advanced
descendent of existing weather modification efforts that seek
clear skies, particularly efforts throughout China (Bluemling
et al., 2020). The story also draws connections among new topics,
including advances in drone-based, three-dimensional monitor-
ing of atmospheric conditions as well as the manipulation of
Table 3. Summary of scenario story names, economic good quadrant, and corresponding descriptions of worlds and story plots
Topic
identifier Scenario name
Economic
good Scenario description
A We are as Gods Public good World: Scientific advancements in the manipulation of seasonal precipitation for agricultural
production.
Story: Speech by Dr. Kay Rasmusdottir, recipient of the Inaugural AGU Tessendorf Lectureship
on Weather Modification, speaks about the history of weather modification, and the dangers it
may pose.
B Pride of Burma Common
pool
World: International treaties exist to manage international moisture flows, to ensure that no
adverse consequences arise from uncoordinated land-use change.
Story: An activist and scientist in Myanmar discovers that moisture flows are being
manipulated in southeast Asia, and investigates the origin of this scheme.
C The Palash Public good World: Profound 21st century weather modification led to global rejection because of
problems, with transformation of precipitation toward a public good.
Story: Journal of 21st century farmer discovered by distant descendent, who is herself
journaling about the contrasting worlds.
D Helping Heaven Club good World: Weather control is normal and is conducted on a community basis, but finding a
balance is often challenging among competing demands.
Story: Three water managers reflect on past management of droughts in their community,
using integrated water management approaches.
E Igor’s Diary Club good World: Weather can be manipulated from satellite-based platforms, and the prohibitions on
weather modification for hostile intent are ignored by some groups.
Story: A leader struggling to cling to power aims to use weather control in an effort to lift his
claim to historical legitimacy.
F The Fertilizer
Incident
Common
pool
World: Transpiration is curated as a public good, and collaboratively stewarded to help
mitigate downwind drought and precipitation deficits.
Story: A grandmother tells story to her grandkids of how her daughter and son-in-law met in
the transpiration fields of Australia’s outback.
G AnyWeather Private good World: Weather is privatized to the extent that rainfall and cloud cover can be requested, if a
customer can pay the price.
Story: A farming household in Germany must see if they can outbid a neighbor to secure the
precipitation that they need for their harvest.
H T-Trading Common
pool
World: Weather modification has been banned, but transpiration is managed to maximize
downwind moisture, leading to the surprising outcome of forest conservation.
Story: An employee of SkyConnect LLC, a Transpiration Futures trading firm, reflects on her life
and career.
I Queen Bee Private good World: Weather is modified for private customers in mountainous areas, so tourists can
holiday at expensive ski resorts.
Story: A group of ski resort cloud seeding employees try and one-up each other with stories
about horrible customer experiences.
J Too Much Rain in
Paradise
Club good World: Manipulation of cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) is regularly deployed to suppress
destructive rainfall and flooding events.
Story: A history podcast shares a story of how a CCN suppression effort in a future Lagos Bay
led to a catastrophic outcome.
8 Patrick W. Keys et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
conditions with the continuous management (and curation) of
desired atmospheric aerosol conditions.
The private good quadrant is represented by ‘AnyWeather’,
and the excerpt highlights how weather services are now ‘on
demand’, similar to other delivery services. While this requires
non-existent technological advancements in microscale weather
modification, the story is especially about the implications of
pay-to-play services in the context of competing user interests.
In this case, the story explores how a for-profit company might
create different types of solutions for managing competing
requests, including letting those with more money have greater
levels of priority for their desired weather.
5. Discussion
5.1 Improved anticipatory capacity
The scenarios depict a range of social, technological, and physical
changes –many of which seem implausible or even impossible in
the present. Yet, climate change, together with technological pro-
gress, is rapidly rendering the impossible, possible; and the
unimaginable, a current event (Pettit et al., 2021; Samenow &
Patel, 2022). Thus, prudence dictates that we take seriously the
highly consequential ideas depicted in these scenarios. In this
vein, we recommend several relevant anticipatory practices that
also apply to water policy governance:
(1) Anticipate changes in regulatory regimes that may be needed
at multiple levels for atmospheric water modification.
(2) Anticipate substantial improvements in the diagnostic and
monitoring capability of atmospheric moisture, precipitation,
and cloud microphysics and the risks of unequal access.
(3) Anticipate overlapping crises, that relate to atmospheric water
flows in surprising ways, and that will motivate unexpected
social, economic, and geopolitical surprises.
(4) Anticipate technological surprises that are disruptive, trans-
formative, and seemingly impossible in the present, which
will change what is plausible regarding modification of
atmospheric water flows.
(5) Anticipate changes in power dynamics (e.g. geopolitical,
social, cultural), that could lead to new configurations of
who is able to exert disproportionate control over atmos-
pheric water flows.
Intentionally adopting these and perhaps other anticipatory
approaches, will improve the responsiveness of both science and
policy toward addressing a rapidly changing human relationship
with the atmospheric water cycle.
5.2 Implications for the governance of atmospheric water
Another important dimension of thinking about this study is how
existing governance and management of atmospheric water fit
into this futures-oriented discussion. Existing research has dis-
cussed the broad outlines of atmospheric water governance
(Keys et al., 2017; te Wierik et al., 2020) and others have discussed
manipulation of the weather more broadly (Bonnheim, 2010;
Table 4. Comparison of scenario characteristics among economic goods quadrants
Public good
●Collaborative stewardship of moisture recycling processes
●Misuse of weather modification technology instigates
treaty-based protections
●Transnational governance
●Civil society is in the lead
Club good
●Community or group management of atmospheric moisture in the absence of
national and international coordination
●Technologies related to suppression of unwanted rainfall, as well as for
generating more rainfall, are common
●Access to weather management technologies is in the hands of a low number of
operators.
Common pool
●Democratically coordinated management
●Large-scale land-use changes (such as deforestation) are tightly
regulated
●Moisture recycling monitoring is comprehensive, open access,
and technologically advanced
Private good
●Private management of atmospheric moisture privileges those with the most
power or money
●Economies are built around the manipulation of weather, including tourism and
agriculture
●Technology companies exist to exploit the desire for ‘on-demand’weather
●Trade-offs between recipients of increased rainfall and those that receive less
Table 5. Brief excerpts from the story scenarios that discuss aspects relevant to the economic goods framing
Public good –Excerpt from ‘The Palash’Club good –Excerpt from ‘Too Much Rain in Paradise’
‘Weather modification, particularly cloud-seeding came to be viewed as an
assault on a basic human right. While the collapse of the AMOC ensured that
the southwest monsoon winds never quite returned to their normal state,
eastern monsoon winds, now freed from the cloud seeding efforts of several
eastern nations, became the dominant harbinger of rain in drought-stricken
areas such as Palashpaari’.
‘The suppression of precipitation relies on careful and complete monitoring
of air quality via the EkoCloud, a 3D network of sensors that continuously
monitor and balance the right distribution of particles in the atmosphere.
Many people who visit Lagos apparently comment on the strange haze over
the bay. This haze is not by accident, but by design’.
Common pool –Excerpt from ‘T-Trading’Private good –Excerpt from ‘AnyWeather’
‘At the NGO they were tireless proponents of additional ecological
protections for the entire Amazon basin. With the tailwind of the Manaus
Protocol, decades of mismanagement were being re-written. But the advent
of T-trading saw Defenda being subsumed by an EcoFinance startup,
SkyConnect LLC. Her job flipped inside out from advancing
ecologically-based financial safeguards for her home, to working as a cog to
maximize transpiration flows’.
‘AnyWeather regrets to inform you that your request for our ‘Spring Rains
service’conflicts with an earlier request by *Mueller, Tom* that supersedes
your own. We apologize for any inconvenience. Note that your account has
been credited a full refund. For any further questions, please click here for
more information’.
Global Sustainability 9
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Chien et al., 2017). Depending on the types of technologies that
are deployed and the spatial scales over which atmospheric
water changes operate, the administrative responsibility could
shift. For small-scale situations, as depicted in the scenarios
‘AnyWeather’and ‘Helping Heaven’(where weather conditions
are manipulated on a local basis), it could be that regulations
remain a national issue, and governance need not interact with
transboundary discussions. Indeed, there are some contemporary
organizations which seek to directly modify regional evapotrans-
piration to moisture recycling patterns, despite the absence of
transboundary governance mechanisms (Rose, 2021). However,
scenarios that involve large-scale transpiration modification,
such as ‘T-Trading’and ‘The Fertilizer Incident’(which depict
very large-scale modifications of land-use and corresponding
large changes to evaporation and transpiration) would necessarily
involve transboundary negotiations. The scenario ‘T-Trading’spe-
cifically lists several international treaties and agreements which
create the operational guardrails for financial instruments to
emerge that manage transpiration. While fictional, this is analo-
gous to other traded commodities that are regulated (to varying
extents) at national and international levels (e.g. staple food
crops, housing) (Clapp & Helleiner, 2012; Smith, 2010). Future
research could advance the understanding of both practical exam-
ples of analogous governance structures that would be relevant for
different quadrants of the economic goods framing, as well as to
describe theoretical governance structures that could meet an
as-yet non-existent activity (e.g. what types of regulatory schemes
would be necessary to govern Transpiration Futures trading?).
5.3 Limitations
This is an initial exploration of atmospheric water as an economic
good, specifically focusing on how humans are modifying this
water globally. Given that we have aimed to be brief in the intro-
duction regarding the conceptual framing, there is a substantial
discussion that should yet be had regarding the economic goods
classification. This discourse, however, is likely to be most fruitful
when examined from multiple disciplinary perspectives, as well as
inter- and trans-disciplinary perspectives. In this study, we have
aimed to introduce the concept, and highlight how a specific
approach (i.e. hybrid futures methods blending computational
text analysis and expert creativity) can advance our perception
of key issues. In this way, our study should be viewed as a horizon
scanning exercise that can begin to enumerate the ideas, pitfalls,
and potential challenges associated with thinking about human
modification of the atmospheric water cycle.
The mapping of topics and keywords from the LDA onto the
economic goods quadrants was conducted prior to the expert
workshops by the lead author, and we emphasize that different
subjective interpretations of this mapping could lead to different
creative outcomes. Future efforts could explore the implications of
different subjective mappings, which could lead to entirely differ-
ent types of story scenarios being developed. Similarly, future
research could aim to develop an objective procedure for inter-
pretation of the LDA results into an economic goods framework.
Yet, given that the entire research effort aims to embrace creativ-
ity, it may be more worthwhile to lean into the opportunity for
numerous creative interpretations of the empirical LDA results
to inform options for more flexible and responsive policy and
governance environments.
Also, while the group of experts collaborating in this study is
highly interdisciplinary (with expertise spanning resource
economics, engineering, urban water systems, environmental
humanities, biodiversity conservation, ecohydrology, and
more), there are yet more disciplines that could be engaged.
In particular, it could be worthwhile to engage weather modifi-
cation personnel and practitioners to think about the future of
their industry to better understand the perspective of ‘insiders’
for this topic.
5.4 Research frontiers
Given that this is among the first efforts to discuss human modi-
fication of atmospheric water using an economic goods framing
(Keys, 2021), there is much yet to do to understand its dimen-
sions, critique the framing, and deploy empirical tools to test
hypotheses. First, there is already considerable scholarship sur-
rounding water as an economic good more broadly (Rogers
et al., 2002; Savenije, 2001; Savenije & van der Zaag, 2002), and
these ideas could be brought to bear more fully to think about
atmospheric water specifically. This could include reflection
from similar types of ‘source–sink’relationships such as water-
sheds that incorporate upstream and downstream ideas into
their study (Jansson et al., 1999), as well as the payment for eco-
system services literature (Jack et al., 2008). Second, the notion of
water as an economic good presupposes that concepts such as
‘valuation’and other ideas that enable management and control
are tenable in the discourse of atmospheric water (Jenerette
et al., 2006; Schaubroeck et al., 2016). Future research ought to
more deeply engage other topics that have managed to examine
valuation of diffuse economic goods, such as air quality
(Levinson, 2012), or more broadly through cultural ecosystem ser-
vices (Sukhdev, 2009).
Third, a tremendous amount of opportunity exists to use these
scenarios as springboards for empirical analysis. This could take
many forms and span numerous disciplines, such as mechanical
engineering, ecohydrological modeling, theoretical economics,
and weather modeling. We provide a snapshot of questions that
emerged from discussion among the group, which could guide
future research and policy into aspects of human modification
of the atmospheric water cycle:
•What are the theoretical limits of land-based weather modifica-
tion? What is the theoretical maximum evaporative contribu-
tion of the terrestrial biosphere? How does this vary around
the planet? Are there biological restrictions to evapotranspir-
ation that could be lifted with genetic modification? What are
the barriers to this type of change?
•What are the technological limits of drone technology and its use
in weather modification? How small could drones theoretically
be constructed, while carrying a payload? What types of pay-
loads could drones carry that are relevant to the weather modi-
fication conversation, including aerosols, CCN, etc.?
•What are the smallest scales of weather modification? What are
the smallest spatial- and time-scales at which weather could be
modified? What prevailing regional and large-scale weather
conditions would be more or less permissible for this type of
micro-manipulation?
•What types of financial instruments could emerge to manage the
flow of atmospheric water flows? Are there existing financial
mechanisms (e.g. trade rules, stock exchange listing agreements)
which indirectly manage atmospheric moisture? Could there
ever be a ‘futures’or ‘options’market to modify atmospheric
water flows?
10 Patrick W. Keys et al.
https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9 Published online by Cambridge University Press
6. Conclusions
Humanity is transforming the atmospheric water cycle not least
through climate change and large-scale land-use change. The
advent of scientifically verifiable cloud seeding may accelerate
the uptake of atmospheric water manipulation in the near future
to an even larger extent. Moreover, scientific policies, legal frame-
works, and governance strategies will need to anticipate this
expanded manipulation and its effects on further altering the glo-
bal hydrological cycle. Thus, in this study we have introduced an
economic goods framework for classifying the types of human
modification of the atmospheric water cycle including atmos-
pheric water as a public good, a club good, a common-pool
resource, and a private good. Moreover, we combined computa-
tional text analysis and collaborative expert visioning, to create
ten story-based scenarios of the future. Specifically, this blending
of objective and subjective approaches provided a rapid method
for efficiently summarizing a large amount of information for a
creative scenario workshop.
Our scenarios depict both familiar and strange futures. These
include detailed worlds with characters that explore issues such as
an Amazon basin dominated not by deforestation, but by
Transpiration Futures trading; privatized on demand weather
that can be called up via an app; transformed drylands to provide
continental moisture bridges; and, international efforts coordinat-
ing the management of the atmospheric water commons. Our
approach effectively blended a broad literature survey into a
rapid, expert-driven scenario development process that resulted
in ten creative visions of the future. To be very clear, these scen-
arios are not meant to be prognostic. They are, instead, intended
to provide a clearer perspective on present-day scientific and
social changes that require outside-the-box thinking. As the
world changes around us, these scenarios can help ignite new pol-
icy questions and lead to novel scientific inquiry to better under-
stand the future of humanity’s modification of the atmospheric
water cycle.
Supplementary material. The supplementary material for this article can
be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/sus.2024.9.
Acknowledgments. The authors acknowledge the facilitation provided by
the Stockholm Resilience Centre during the ‘Water resilience workshop’held
in February 2022, and the contribution of Dr. E.H. Krueger during the
workshop.
Author contributions. P. W. K. led this study, including conceptualization,
data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administra-
tion, visualization, and writing. L. W.-E. contributed to conceptualization,
investigation, and writing. M.-L. M., A. P., F. S., O. V., R. W., and R. B. W.
all contributed to investigation and writing. C. F. and P. D. contributed to
the investigation.
Funding statement. L. W.-E. and A. P. are funded by FORMAS, project
number 2019-01220. F. S. is funded by the Global Challenges Foundation
via Future Earth. C. F. is funded by the Beijer Foundation and the Marianne
and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.
Competing interests. None.
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